The real-world impact of opinions like Megyn Kelly's was on display this week when a black ninth grader was chastised by his teacher for dressing like Santa Claus, because according to him, Santa is white. Comments such as these are not only offensive, they erode a child's self-image, as a clinical psychologist told CNN.

Fox's Megyn Kelly sparkedmuchcontroversy on December 11forinsisting that Santa was, and is, white, in response to a piece by Slate columnist Aisha Harris on how the universal image of a white Santa can be difficult for minority children to reconcile with their own experiences. Kelly later accused her critics of race-baiting and targeting her simply because she worked at Fox.

On December 16, CNN Newsroom highlighted Kelly's comments when telling the story of a black student at Cleveland High School in New Mexico who was rebuked by his teacher for dressing up in a Santa outfit. According to host Wolf Blitzer, "the teacher reportedly told the ninth grader that he couldn't dress as Santa because he was of the wrong skin color."

Comments like these, and Kelly's, are harmful to children, as clinical psychologist Dr. Jeffrey Gardere illustrated to CNN's George Howell:

HOWELL: So when a child hears comments like that from Megyn Kelly, or from a teacher who puts his opinion out there, like we heard in New Mexico, what does it do to the child's self-image?

GARDERE: It begins to erode that child's self-image. We are a society that says that we are all equal and we can all participate in something that is generic, as Santa Claus.

Following the episode, CNN reported, the student's father said his son "really wants nothing to do with Christmas this year."

The incident at Cleveland High School is a stark real-life example of the effect that comments like Megyn Kelly's can have on children. A teacher's ridiculing the student for daring to be black and dress as Santa Claus reflects Kelly's view that Santa is invariably a white man, and minority children should simply get over it. Kelly herself summed it up well: "Just because it makes you uncomfortable doesn't mean it has to change."

Mainstream media outlets echoed a deceptive framing, created by the conservative media and amplified by House Republicans, of comments by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), leaving the false impression that he dismissed the plight of cancer-stricken patients denied care by the government shutdown.

A CNNsegment described recall elections that removed two Colorado state senators who had supported stronger gun laws from office as pitting an anti-recall billionaire against a pro-recall plumber "with no real money," ignoring hundreds of thousands of dollars of spending in favor of the recall by the National Rifle Association and other national groups.

Introducing an interview with Giron, host Brooke Baldwin described the recall effort as "a war by proxy between gun control advocate Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire from New York and a Pueblo plumber by the name of Victor Head ... a political novice and a gun rights supporter with no real money to speak of here. And you know the end of the story here, the plumber won."

Baldwin said that the recalls were successful "despite the fact that Bloomberg's group spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Giron's behalf" and also described the recall as "mega mega cash from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Mayor Bloomberg versus this grassroots effort" during a September 12 segment:

While Baldwin is correct that Head's organization, Pueblo Freedom and Rights, raised little, she ignored the fact that conservative groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of the recall effort.

CNN host Fredricka Whitfield continued to incorrectly refer to Chelsea Manning as a male as one of her guests suggested that providing Manning with hormone therapy while in prison would be "beyond insanity."

During the August 24 edition of CNN Newsroom, Whitfield invited civil rights attorney Avery Friedman and criminal defense attorney Richard Herman to discuss the possibility of providing Manning - previously known as Bradley Manning - with medical treatment for her gender dysphoria while she serves her sentence in an all-male military prison for leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Herman, who is a regular CNN legal commentator, railed against the possibility of providing Manning with adequate medical care, calling the idea "beyond insanity" and suggesting that Manning could get "good practice" presenting as a female in prison:

HERMAN: It's absurd. Sometimes we have to step back and say, "you know, some of these cases we cover, this is beyond insanity." There's no way that taxpayers are going to pay a hundred thousand dollars for a gender transformation for this guy while he's in prison. If he wants to be Chelsea, he can practice all he wants at Fort Leavenworth, because those guys are there for a long time. So he can get good practice and when he gets out, he can have the operation or whatever, and he can pay for it.

CNN's Whitfield continued Herman's line of questioning, repeatedly referring to Manning as a male and wondering why Manning had waited until after sentencing to announce her gender dysphoria:

WHITFIELD: And if this argument is entertained, the issue has to be "why now?" Why wouldn't this have been addressed long before trial, long before sentencing?

CNN invited hate group leader Randy Thomasson to appear on the network to condemn a new California law ensuring the rights of transgender teens to use facilities and participate in programs corresponding to their gender identities. Thomasson appeared along with the Transgender Law Center's Masen Davis, a transgender male. At the end of the segment, Thomasson told Davis and host Brooke Baldwin, "Hey, good to talk to you ladies."

Appearing on the August 13 edition of CNN Newsroom, Thomasson, president of the anti-LGBT hate group Save California, peddled standard transphobic tropes about "sexually confused" transgender individuals, before closing with his snide remark:

CNN distorted the goal of a proposed law to strengthen the ban on illegal racial profiling in New York, erroneously claiming it would not allow police to refer to race, religion, or disability at all when describing a suspect.

CNN ran a segment highlighting a New York Postarticle on an advertisement from the New York Police Department (NYPD) Captains Endowment Association depicting a blindfolded police officer and asking, "How effective is a police officer with a blindfold on?" The NYPD Captains Endowment Association is fighting the measure claiming that the bill would "ban cops from identifying a suspect's age, gender, color or disability." Even though CNN's law enforcement analyst Mike Brooks, a former police officer, acknowledges that the claims made in the ad may not be true, he goes on to parrot its claims and say that if such a proposal is enacted, "cops aren't going to be able to do their job":

Despite Brooks' assertion, the bill would not ban police officers from using those descriptions to identify a suspect. The bill clearly states that police officers cannot use "actual or perceived race ... as the determinative factor in initiating law enforcement action against an individual, rather than an individual's behavior or other information or circumstances" (emphasis added) to the suspected crime. Law enforcement can still use race and other identifying factors in stopping suspects, as long as it is not the main, or determinative, factor in doing so. According to the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), a fitting description or having a full description of the suspect prior to stopping someone "was the reason for a stop-and frisk just 16 percent of the time in 2011,"despite the fact that 90 percent of people stopped under the NYPD's current stop-and-frisk policy were either black or Latino.

Is the media's heavy focus on Washington "scandals" pushing positive economic developments to the wayside?

CNN correspondent Christine Romans observed that focus on Washington "scandals" may be knocking positive economic news off the agenda, claiming "now the economy is slowly healing, all the conversation is about controversies though."

Romans isn't alone in her observation. On the May 29 edition of MSNBC Live, Talking Points Memo's Igor Bobic highlighted the fact that "scandal-mania" in Washington is taking all the oxygen out of positive economic developments, prompting host Thomas Roberts to note, "There really is this obsession we have in D.C. right now talking about the IRS or Benghazi or even the DOJ scandal, but we're not talking about where we're moving economically as a country, but it is in a positive direction."

Indeed, media has been largely silent on economic gains, most recently demonstrated by an underreporting of the housing price surge.

On May 28, Standard & Poor's released its Case-Shiller index of home prices. The report showed that in March, housing prices rose at an annual rate above 10 percent, posting the largest gain in the housing market since April 2006.

This positive news, however, did not garner any significant attention from cable news networks. According to a Media Mattersanalysis, in the day following the release of the Case-Shiller report, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN spent a total of nine minutes and 32 seconds discussing the surge in housing prices.

CNN's Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger used right-wing scandal mongering to push the discredited allegation that talking points about the attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were edited for political purposes. Borger's analysis ignored that the intelligence community signed off on these talking points and that General David Petreaus testified in November that references to Al Qaeda were removed to protect the integrity of the investigation and to avoid tipping off terrorists.

Borger claimed on the May 10 edition of CNN Newsroom that the Benghazi talking points "were edited to the point of inaccuracy" and went on to ask, "is that a cover-up? Is it a whitewash? We don't know the answer to that."

The answer to Borger's question, however, has already been answered in testimony by former Director of the CIA General David Petraeus. In November 2012, Petraeus told lawmakers that the decision not to publicize the suspected involvement of Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was made so as not to tip off the terrorist groups. As The New York Times reported:

Mr. Petraeus, who resigned last week after admitting to an extramarital affair, said the names of groups suspected in the attack -- including Al Qaeda's franchise in North Africa and a local Libyan group, Ansar al-Shariah -- were removed from the public explanation of the attack immediately after the assault to avoiding alerting the militants that American intelligence and law enforcement agencies were tracking them, lawmakers said.

The controversy over these talking points has been revived ever since ABC News released what it called an "exclusive" report on May 10. In fact, the report revealed nothing new and is just a revival of previously hashed-out myths and misinformation.

In several on-air interviews about the then-pending fiscal cliff legislation, journalists allowed Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to attack the bill without noting Issa's personal financial stake in opposing the legislation and keeping his own taxes at a lower rate.

In appearances on Fox News' Fox & Friends (1/2), CNN's The Situation Room (1/1) and CNN Newsroom (12/31/12), the issue of Issa's wealth was not broached by the reporters and anchors who interviewed him.

As Politicoreported, Issa's 2011 financial disclosure statement showed almost $15 million in earnings from investments. The vast majority of Issa's income comes from investments -- income that will be taxed at a higher rate under the legislation that just passed (capital gains taxes will be increased from 15 percent to 20 percent for families making over $450,000 a year.)

The Center for Responsive Politics estimates that Issa has a net worth between $195 million and $700 million. Roll Callranked him as the second wealthiest member of the 112th Congress, based on the lowest and most charitable estimate of his wealth (members of Congress are only required to report ranges of their wealth, not exact numbers.)

In voting "No" on the bill, Issa voted in his own self-interest, a pertinent fact that Fox and CNN never bothered to tell their viewers.

Reports by major media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and CNN, are giving credence to Republicans' baseless attacks on Ambassador Susan Rice over statements she made in September appearances on Sunday morning political shows regarding an attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. In fact, Rice's remarks were based on the intelligence available at the time, and commentators from across the political spectrum agree that the attacks on Rice are inaccurate and driven by partisanship.